


First Meeting

by Scrawlers



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humor, I'm just putting it in the relationship tag to make it easier to find, It's completely platonic, No actual romance here because they're too young for that, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Chrom and Robin met once before, as children, though neither of them remember it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a long while ago on Tumblr, but I'm just getting around to updating it now. Everything about Robin's mother/life before the game is pure headcanon, since as far as I know we don't have anything that is canon aside from the fact that her mother spirited her away as a baby and fled to Ylisse to escape having Robin be possessed by Grima.

The capital was enormous, and Robin was lost.

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but even at the tender age of seven she knew enough to know that her mother was likely frantic. Her mother had worried enough about bringing Robin into the city to begin with—had deliberated for well over an hour whether or not it was safe to leave Robin at home in the cabin while she went to the city for groceries. In the end, the threat of brigands had convinced her to bring Robin along, but they hadn’t been in the city for more than fifteen minutes before they were separated. Robin thought that maybe this was her fault, that perhaps she shouldn’t have tried to follow that bird, but she had expected her mother to be watching her—her mother was  _always_ watching her—and so she hadn’t really thought about what she should or shouldn’t do before she wandered off. Now she was standing on the side of the street, the bird having flown away, alone except for the pulsing crowd of strangers around her.

At the very least, Robin could truthfully say that she wasn’t scared.

“Mother?” she called, and when no response came she raised her voice. “ _Mother_?” Still no response, though a few strangers gave pause and looked over at her, staring down as though she was a curious little animal they’d never seen before. Robin didn’t have very much experience with people—she and her mother had been isolated for as long as she could remember—and so while she wasn’t scared of being alone, she suddenly felt a thrill of panic under the weight of so many stares. She scrambled backwards hastily, nearly tripped over her own feet, and as a tall man with a grizzly beard reached out toward her she turned and bolted, weaving between people’s legs and around large shopping bags. She was running in the same direction she’d come, she thought, and she figured that so long as she kept running she’d find her mother, but she couldn’t remember where it was that she had last  _seen_ her mother, and as soon as the worry crossed her mind that she might pass up the place where they last were, she crashed into something soft and was thrown back onto the ground.

It took Robin a moment of being dazed on the ground before she realized that although she had cried out, she wasn’t the only one that did. She pushed herself into a seated position to see that there was a little boy in front of her who looked to be around her age, with a tuft of dark blue hair on his head and fine clothing adorning his body. Like Robin he had been thrown to the ground, but unlike Robin he was massaging one arm, as if he had used it to break his fall.

“Who are you?” Robin asked, and the boy took notice of her at last, blinking big blue eyes at her before he frowned.

“That’s rude,” he said, and this time it was Robin’s turn to frown, more out of confusion than anything.

“What is?”

“Asking someone’s name before giving your name yourself. My tutor says you’re always supposed to give your name first, it’s only proper.” He sniffed, and brushed dirt off his pants. “But I usually have guards and servants around to say my name for me before I can, anyway.”

The prospect of having ‘guards’ or 'servants’ was foreign to Robin, but those concepts were minute in detail in comparison to having a little boy before her. She had never before met anyone who was close to her in age—had hardly seen anyone  _period_ outside of her mother for as long as she could remember—and she couldn’t take her eyes off him now.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude, honest. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” the boy said, and he pushed himself to his feet. Robin stared up at him, still a bit too dazed to move, and after a moment he extended a hand toward her. “Here, give me your hand, I’ll help you up. You’re not hurt, are you? Emmy will be mad at me if I hurt someone, and Frederick will probably scold me even if it was an accident.”

“No, I’m okay,” Robin said, but she took the boy’s hand regardless, wondering who 'Emmy’ and 'Frederick’ were. The boy easily pulled her to her feet, and even standing he was a full head taller than she was. He smiled.

“Good. Frederick’s already going to scold me because I snuck off without him, so I don’t need him getting mad at me for accidentally hurting someone, too.”

“Sneaked,” Robin said.

The boy blinked in confusion. “Sorry?”

“You sneaked off, not snuck,” she said, and he frowned. “Snuck’s not a word.”

“It’s a fine enough word,” the boy said. “Saying I snuck off, or sneaked off—it’s the same thing in the end.”

“Is not,” Robin argued, and the boy’s brow furrowed into a scowl. “Snuck’s not right, Mother said so, and my books always use the word sneaked, too.”

“Well, your books are dumb,” the boy said, and Robin felt a flash of indignation flare through her. “I’m the prince of House Ylisse, and I say I  _snuck_ off from Frederick when he wasn’t looking.”

“Well,  _I’m_ the girl from a house in the woods, and I say snuck’s not a word and  _you're_ the dumb one,” Robin shot back.

The boy looked torn between being offended that she had called him dumb and being confused at what she said. “House Inthawoods?” he repeated. Robin nodded. “That’s not a House.” 

“Is so,” Robin said, and mirrored the boy’s pose as he folded his arms across his chest.

“Is not. I know all the Houses in Ylisse. Emmy taught me, and my tutor tested me, and Frederick even made me flash cards, and 'Inthawoods’ is not one of them.” The boy paused, looking at her for a second, and then added, “You don’t look much like a girl, besides.”

“What do you mean, I don’t look much like a girl?” Robin demanded.

“You’re wearing trousers,” the boy said, and he pointed to Robin’s pants, which were still spotted here and there by dirt she’d picked up in the woods and on the plain, “and your hair is all short,” he added, and Robin lifted one hand up to lightly tug on the ends of her choppy hair, which fell no longer than the nape of her neck. “All the girls I know wear dresses and their hair is always long. You don’t look like them at all.”

“Well, so?” Robin asked, and she folded her arms again, holding them tightly around herself. “So what if I don’t look like a girl you know? I still am one. And you don’t look much like a prince, either.”

“So what if I don’t look like a prince?” the boy shot back, parroting her words in his defense. “I still am one. I’m more of a prince than House Inthawoods is a House, because it isn’t one.”

“It is  _so_ , and I could show you if—” Robin stopped, and her heart felt like it flipped unpleasantly in her chest. The boy seemed to notice; his expression of annoyance shifted to one of concern.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m lost,” Robin said, and she didn’t know why she was telling him this—why she was trusting him with the knowledge that she was alone and helpless when she had no idea who he really was. But instead of laughing or jeering at her, the boy only looked more worried, and so Robin felt compelled to continue. “Mother brought me here for the first time today, but I saw a bird and got lost from Mother after that. I don’t know where she is." 

"You’ve never been to Yllistol before?” the boy asked, aghast. Robin shook her head, and the boy huffed a short laugh. “Now I  _know_ your 'House’ isn’t a House. All of the Houses live in Yllistol, or at least come here a lot.” Robin opened her mouth to argue, to point out that her house  _was_ a house whether he wanted to believe it or not, but before she could the boy grinned at her. “But that’s okay! It doesn’t matter if your House is a House or not. What matters is that you’re lost and you need help, and I can help you.”

Robin closed her mouth and swallowed down her rebuttal to the house argument, and when it seemed as though he wasn’t going to retract his statement she asked, “You can?”

“Of course I can, and I will. I’m the prince of Ylisse, which means that it’s my job to look out for the peopleof Ylisse— _all_ of the people, no matter where they come from.” The boy’s fierce grin softened a little, into a more genuine smile. “So come on, I’ll help you find your mother. Even if we can’t find her ourselves, we can ask Frederick, and  _he'll_ help us find her. I’m sure of it.”

By all logic, Robin had no reason to trust this boy. His insults about her house aside, she didn’t even know his name, much less whether or not his claims about finding her mother were credible. Logically speaking, he should have been just as scary as the other people around them. But somehow, he wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t smart, and maybe her mother would scold her for trusting a stranger later, but somehow Robin believed the boy, and couldn’t help but return his smile. 

“Okay,” she said, and she laughed a little as the boy’s smile grew, his whole face lighting up. “Where should we start looking?”

The boy took her hand in his before she could react or pull away, but she found that she didn’t really want to as he tugged her down the street, weaving between the legs of the adults around them, much as she had before. “This way, I’ll show you,” he said. “We’ll check the fountain first.”

Robin’s mother wasn’t by the fountain. She wasn’t by the bread stand, either, though the boy obtained delicious bread rolls filled with blueberry jam from the stand—one for each of them, even though Robin hadn’t asked and didn’t have any money of her own to pay with—which made the venture worth it. An hour later they still hadn’t made any progress in the search, but the boy had shown her the clock tower and the pegasus stables, as well as the blossom garden near the palace and the sweet shop (which they left with pockets full of sweets, since the boy seemed to be deaf to any of Robin’s protests about not having any money). The crowds had started to thin out as evening approached, and so they were able to walk down the side of the street without being jostled. They were no longer holding hands, the boy having stuck his into his pockets, and Robin kept her own comfortably folded across her stomach.

“Where should we go next?” the boy wondered aloud, his head tilted back so he could watch the sky. Robin glanced over at him for a moment before she turned her eyes skyward as well.

“Maybe we should go find that Frederick person you mentioned earlier? Since it doesn’t seem like we can find Mother anywhere . . .”

The boy started, as though she had shocked him with a bit of lightning magic, and looked over at her with a sheepish expression. “Maybe . . . we should. But . . . but he’s going to be cross with me when I do see him again.”

“Why?” Robin asked. They had stopped now, at the mouth of a dark alley, and the boy scuffed his foot against the ground. “Is it because you ran away?”

“I didn’t run away!” he said, and he sounded indignant. His shoulders slumped after a second, and he looked away again. “I only didn’t want to go to my etiquette lessons today, that’s all. They’re boring. A prince needs to actually  _do_ things sometimes, you know? Things besides lessons. So on the way to lessons, when Frederick stopped to talk to one of the other guards, I snuck away.” Robin pressed her lips together and refrained from correcting him again. In the absence of her correction, he sighed. “But I’m going to get scolded sooner or later, right? So we probably should go find him, especially so he can help look for your mother.”

Robin frowned. As much as she wanted to find her mother, the thought of the boy getting in trouble because he was trying to help her made a cold slip of shame slide down her back. “You could always tell him you were just trying to help me,” she said. The boy looked up at her, his eyes a bit wider with surprise. “That isn’t a lie, either. Just tell him you were trying to help me find Mother. He can’t be mad at you for that, can he?”

“I snuck away before I was trying to help you, though. Helping you came after I did something wrong,” the boy said.

Robin smiled. “He doesn’t have to know that part. Just tell him you saw me from a distance and you came over to help, like how I followed the bird and got separated from Mother in the first place. You said that as prince it was your job to help all of the people in Ylisse, right? So you were just doing your job. You weren’t doing anything wrong.” She paused, and then added after a moment, “If you think about it, this is even more right than going to your lesson would be.”

The boy stared at her for a moment before he laughed, bright and warm. Robin felt herself grin in response.

“I like the way you think,” the boy said. “That sounds like a great thing to tell Frederick. Let’s go with that. Come on—we can take a shortcut to the palace using this alley.”

The boy’s idea of a shortcut caused Robin’s smile to fade. The alley they’d been standing in front of was considerably darker than the street they were standing on, and although Robin wasn’t afraid of the dark, there was something about the alley that gave her pause.

“Are you sure?” she said dubiously. “It doesn’t look very safe.”

The boy paused, and looked back at her with a look that was half concerned, half teasing. “Are you scared?”

Robin puffed out her cheeks in consternation. “No.”

“Because if you’re scared, we don’t have to go this way.”

“I said I’m not. I just—”

“My baby sister gets scared all the time, so I know how to handle it. She’s only three, but I’m sure it would be the same with—”

“I said I’m not scared!” Robin said, and while the boy look surprised for a moment, he laughed a second later. Robin huffed a sigh. “Let’s just take the stupid shortcut. But if we get eaten by monsters, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

“Monsters aren’t real,” the boy said, as he and Robin started down the alley. Robin looked at him askance.

“Do you really believe that?”

“Of course I do!”

Robin snorted. “Why? Just because you’ve never seen monsters doesn’t mean they’re not real. Just because you’ve never done something doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

The boy gave her a skeptical look. “You could say that for anything, though. Emmy says—”

“Who is Emmy, anyway? You keep mentioning her.”

“Emmy’s my big sister, and she says—”

What exactly Emmy said was lost in the next second. As Robin and the boy rounded a corner to go into the next alley, something moved from behind a large stack of cardboard boxes. Robin brought herself up to a sharp stop and took one step back, prepared to run, while the boy took one step forward, one hand out to block Robin from progressing. The two stood still a moment, afraid to even breathe too loudly in case they provoked whatever it was, but it seemed as if their entry into the alley, coupled with their loud voices, did that well enough for them. The creature rose onto four paws and came out from around the boxes, sniffing at the air, and as it caught sight of them, it lifted its hackles over yellowed teeth in a low, building snarl.

“You were right,” the boy said, his voice hushed and taut with fear. “Monsters do exist.”

“That’s not a monster,” Robin said, and her voice was no louder than his. “That’s a dog.” A very big dog, with very big teeth and very mean eyes, but a dog all the same. The boy took another step forward, half shielding her, and Robin turned her attention to him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Monster or dog, it doesn’t matter,” the boy said. His voice was a little louder now, a little stronger, but she could still hear a faint tremble in it. “I’ll protect you from it, so stay back, okay?”

Robin glanced back at the dog to see that although it was advancing slowly, it had advanced enough so that it was almost clear of the boxes. She looked back at the boy. “It could eat you in two bites,” she said. The boy took another step forward, completely shielding her now, and the volume of the dog’s growling increased.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m a prince of Ylisse, and as prince I need to protect the people—all of the people. So I’m going to protect you.” The boy raised his chin in defiance. “A prince can’t be scared of a stupid dog, anyway. What kind of prince would that make me, huh?”

_A smart one,_ Robin thought, but somehow, despite the fact that she thought the dog was something to fear and that she herself had been afraid of it not two minutes prior, all of her own fear had left her body, replaced only with a sense of calm. She wasn’t sure if it was because the boy had promised to protect her or because focusing her attention on him kept her focus from the dog just long enough for her head to clear, but either way she no longer felt as though both her mind and body were chained down by terror. Instead, when she looked over at the dog, she was able to notice little things, such as how it was still standing pretty close to the boxes, and if it turned a certain way . . .

“I have an idea,” she said, and she pulled one of the larger lollies out of her pocket, holding it up for the dog to see. The dog’s ears perked up, its snarling momentarily ceased, but before it could change its mind or the boy could react Robin threw it as hard as she could. Her aim was true; the lolly struck the wall on the opposite side of the boxes but behind the dog, which caused the creature to turn sharply, following both the arc of the lolly through the air and the sound of it hitting the wall. Unfortunately for the dog, its spin caused its hindquarters to strike the boxes, which sent them tumbling down. Robin was sure the dog wasn’t hurt, but it yelped all the same, buried under the boxes as it suddenly was. Without wasting a beat, Robin took the boy’s hand in her own and yanked him back down the alley whence they came. The boy fell into pace easily with her, having started to run the second she took his hand and pulled him along, and the two of them didn’t stop running until they had put a sizable amount of distance between themselves and the alley, both of them breathing heavily as they released each other’s hand at last.

“That . . . was so great,” the boy said as he finally regained his breath, and he beamed at her through flushed cheeks. “I  _really_ like the way you think now. You have to be some kind of genius.”

“Not really,” Robin said, and the heat in her cheeks now had only a little to do with how far they’d run. “I just sort of . . . had an idea . . .”

“Yeah, a really smart one. You saved our lives . . .” the boy trailed off, looking at her curiously, before he said, “You know, I don’t think you ever told me your name. But then again, I don’t think I told you mine, either.” Robin opened her mouth to introduce herself, but before she could he stuck his hand out toward her, and drew himself up with an air of importance that was betrayed by his goofy smile. “I’m Prince Chrom of the Halidom of Ylisse, but please just call me Chrom. I think we’re friends enough for that by now.”

Robin had started to raise her hand to take his, but she paused as the last sentence left his mouth. “Friends?” she echoed, and he nodded.

“Yes. Is that okay?” The boy—Chrom—looked a bit uncertain now, and he drew his hand back slightly. “I just figured, after everything we did today, and the adventure we had . . . but if you don’t want—”

“No! No, it’s okay!” Robin said hastily, and Chrom brightened again, his easy smile returning to his face. “I’ve just . . . I’ve never had a . . . I was just surprised.”

“Well, a lot of surprising things have happened today,” Chrom said, and Robin laughed as she took his hand and shook it.

“Yeah, for sure. But it’s nice to meet you, Chrom. My name is—”

Instead of her name, all that left Robin’s mouth was a gasp as something strong wrapped around her middle and lifted her up from the ground, her hand yanked from Chrom’s grasp. It took only a second for Robin to recognize the smell of her mother’s perfume as she was turned so that her chin rested on the woman’s shoulder, which quelled the panic that, half a second earlier, had almost prompted her to scream. Still, as she twisted her head back around to look at Chrom, she saw that he was still reaching up for her, even as a man in armor came running up from the opposite direction.

“Who are you?” Chrom demanded, and with her mother holding Robin as she was, he looked even smaller than he had before, when they were both so near to the ground they could see ants in the dirt without trying. “Put her down!”

“Chrom, it’s okay! She’s my mother,” Robin said. Chrom relaxed, but Robin’s mother went rigid, her arms now holding Robin so tightly it was almost painful. Robin looked over at her mother’s face in confusion. “Mother?”

“Chrom . . . so this boy is . . . he’s one of the Exalted?” Robin’s mother whispered, and she took a few steps backward. Robin looked over at Chrom to see that he was frowning as well, and that he looked as confused as she felt.

“Ma'am, are you okay?” he asked. The man in armor had finally caught up to them, and he stood just behind Chrom. Even held in her mother’s arms as she was, the man in armor still stood taller than Robin. “If you need help, we can—”

“Milord,” the man in armor said, and the boy’s attention was diverted so that he looked up at the man in armor instead. Without wasting a beat Robin’s mother turned and ran, and this time Robin did yelp a little, startled by the sudden shift. But as her mother darted through the crowds, taking Robin away from Chrom as quickly as she could, Robin spared one last look over her mother’s shoulder, her eyes easily landing on the blue-haired boy through the crowd.

Chrom looked as confused and upset as she felt, and all things considered, Robin couldn’t blame him.

\- - -

Chrom watched the girl’s mother whisk her away, an uncomfortable feeling coiling in his stomach like a frightened snake. The woman hadn’t looked upset, at least not in the sense that belied anger; she had looked _terrified._ Chrom wasn’t too well versed in Ylisse’s history yet, but he knew just enough from Emmy to know that their father had done some not-so-great things when he was still alive. Was this a result of that? But if the girl and her mother were Ylisseans, they shouldn’t have had anything to fear . . .

“Milord,” Frederick said again, and Chrom found his confusion swept away by a sudden rush of guilt and dread. Had he found Frederick with the girl and they had followed their original plan it would have been fine, but . . . “May I ask why you decided to run away today?”

“I didn’t run away,” Chrom muttered, and as Frederick raised an eyebrow Chrom puffed out his cheeks. “I mean it! I . . . I saw that girl as we were on our way to the tutor’s, and it looked like she needed help. It turns out she did. She was looking for her mother.”

“You have been missing for a little over two hours,” Frederick said, and Chrom shifted guiltily on the spot. “Why did you not bring her immediately to the guard if she was missing from her mother?”

“I thought we could find her mother on our own, and I wasn’t wrong.” Chrom pointed back in the direction of the crowd. “See? That was her mother. We found her in the end.”

To Chrom’s surprise, Frederick smiled. “It looked to me as though she found you,” he said, and Chrom huffed a sigh.

“If you want to look at it that way, then yes, she did.” Chrom looked back to the crowd, and his irritation faded, replaced by the same sort of melancholy that filled him on dreary days. “But she found her mother in the end, so it’s all right. That’s all that matters.”

“You don’t seem very happy about it, milord,” Frederick noted.

Chrom kicked his boot against the ground. “No, it’s good that she found her mother. It’s just that . . . I had a lot of fun today. She was really cool, and smart. But she said she’d never been to Ylisstol before today, and so I don’t think she lives around here. I don’t even know her name, so I don’t know if I’ll see her again. And . . .” Chrom shrugged. “I just wanted to be friends.”

Frederick was quiet a moment before he reached out to put a hand on Chrom’s head. “Look lively, milord,” he said. “You may yet see her again one day. You’ve no real idea of what the future holds.”

Chrom frowned a little, but the unpleasant pressure in his chest felt lessened ever so slightly. “That’s true . . . but—”

“And even if not, she is far from the only girl in the world,” Frederick said. Chrom knitted his eyebrows together in confusion as Frederick drew his hand away, smiling. “There are plenty of candidates for your future bride yet.”

“My future—what?!” Chrom’s yelp attracted the stares of several nearby citizens, but far from being fazed Frederick only laughed and started back in the direction of the palace. “Frederick, don’t be stupid! I don’t want to get  _married_! I'm  _never_ getting married!”

“You’ll be married someday, milord,” Frederick said, and Chrom jogged to match pace with him, glowering up at his teasing babysitter.

“I will not,” he insisted. “If I get married, that means I’ll have a wife that I have to stay home with. I won’t be able to go on adventures. I’ll never get married. I’ll leave that to Emmy, since she has to stay here and be the Exalt anyway.”

Frederick only smiled in that maddening, I’m-older-than-you-and-therefore-know-more-than-you way of his and said, “We’ll see.”

Chrom fumed, and stubbornly folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah,” he said. “We will. We’ll see how I  _never_ get married, ever.”

Frederick said nothing more, only smiled that smile of his, and after a few seconds passed and Chrom’s fuming irritation melted away, he looked back at the crowd they were quickly leaving behind them.

The girl was nowhere in sight. She was long gone, if Chrom had to guess. But they’d had an adventure today, even if it was a spontaneous one, and she’d kept up with him every step of the way. Heck, more than that—she  _saved_ him when they were up against the dog in the alley.

Chrom still didn’t want to get married, and was pretty adamant that he never would. But if he married someone like that girl, well . . . he supposed it wouldn’t be so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Chrom and Sully were childhood friends, which may contradict what he says about "all girls he knows." However, they're about seven here, and since Sully is from a noble House I imagine that her parents may have forced her to keep her hair long/wear dresses when she was young, despite her tomboyish nature. It wasn't until she was older that she was free to dress and wear her hair as she wanted.


End file.
